(This article has been updated since it was first posted)

By Jim DeLa
Editor, The Southern Cross

In Southwest Florida, pipelines have been established for short-term and long-term Haitian relief, as well as new plans to minister to the growing Haitian community in Collier and Lee counties.

The diocese has also been providing pastoral care to the wife of Haiti Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin, who was injured in the quake.
When the earthquake hit Jan. 12, Duracin’s house collapsed, trapping and injuring his wife, Marie-Edithe. After initial treatment at a hospital in Haiti, she was airlifted to the USNS Comfort hospital ship. On Feb. 9 she and son James were transported to Tampa General Hospital.
She was discharged from the hospital Feb. 24 but faces weeks of rehabilitation for injuries to her leg.

Deanery sends two to Haiti
Two men from St. Petersburg made a weeklong trip to Haiti to assess damage to a school founded by St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church.
Parishioner Jamie Bennett; the Rev. Joe Myrthil, one of the founders of the school and pastor of Redeemer Baptist Church, which worships in St. Matthew’s parish hall; and the Rev. John Kivuva Mwiya, an assisting priest at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, planned to spend a week at St. Francis School in Loiseau, about 30 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter. At the last minute, Bennett was not able to make the trip.

Actually getting to Loiseau was not an easy task, Myrthil told The Southern Cross after his return. No direct flights into Haiti were possible. On Feb. 28, he and Fr. Mwiya flew to Puerto Rico and then into Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. From there, they took a bus into Haiti.
Once they got to the school on Jan. 29, they discovered none of the classroom buildings were habitable. “One was completely destroyed,” Myrthil said. The other building’s roof was sound, but the walls were damaged.

After spending the night sleeping on the ground, they arose early to open a makeshift medical clinic for residents with the barest of essentials — aspirin, Tylenol, bandages, alcohol and antibiotics. With the help of a student nurse from a nearby town, they began providing first aid and meals for survivors. The two also spent $500 on rice, beans and oil to provide one meal a day to the town’s residents.

The school committee at St. Matthew’s, Myrthil said, is committed to getting the school for its 142 students open as soon as possible. With $2,000 recently wired to the school from St. Matthew’s, teachers will be paid for January and February, and repairs to the facilities may allow them to reopen in early April.

Haitians in U.S. need help, too
Meanwhile, efforts are underway to support the sizable Haitian community in Collier County. The Rev. Panel Guerrier is a Haitian priest ministering to an estimated 15,000 Haitian citizens, many of them undocumented workers in low-paying jobs. The scope of the disaster has touched nearly everyone, he said. The situation has been compounded by the inability to communicate with their families. “It’s very difficult for them. Most people have lost someone.”

Fr. Gurrier is working to assist Haitian nationals to apply for “temporary protected status” recently granted to Haitians who have been in the U.S. prior to the Jan. 12 earthquake. It will allow eligible Haitians to continue living and working in the U.S. for the next 18 months.

“This is the right thing to do,” Sen. Bill Nelson said of the Obama administration’s Jan. 15 announcement. “Haitian immigrants already in the U.S. will not only be able to make money to support themselves, but also to send remittances to their suffering families back in Haiti.”
However, Fr. Guerrier says word of the government’s decision is spreading slowly through the Haitian community. And the $430 needed to process an application is beyond the reach of many it is designed to help.

Guerrier and the Rev. Tara McGraw, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Naples, recently met with Bishop Smith to discuss options to provide long-term help to the Haitian community. Some ideas included encouraging local parishes to develop “sister” relationships with churches and schools in Haiti so that direct, specific aid can begin to flow where it is needed most. Other possible efforts include literacy programs and job training.

D.R. to be staging area
The church in the Dominican Republic is preparing to provide long-term assistance to its neighbor by offering to be a staging area for relief efforts.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the Dominican Republic and our church have the responsibility of providing ‘the pipeline’ to get the help that is needed into Haiti,” said Bishop William Skilton, the assisting bishop of the Dominican Episcopal Church.

According to the newsletter of the Dominican Development Group, an agency that coordinates ministry among nine U.S. dioceses with companion relationships with the Dominican church, shipments of food, water and other emergency supplies are being sent across the border in Haiti every other day.

The DDG is headquartered at DaySpring Conference Center in Parrish.

It is expected that a good portion of relief efforts will go through the Dominican Republic, and much of it will be purchased there, the DDG reports. Dominican Bishop Julio Holguín has said he expects his diocese to play a major role in eventual efforts to rebuild the Haitian infrastructure.

ERD busy on the ground
Episcopal Relief and Development has been at work following the Jan. 12 earthquake. The agency is aiding the 25,000 survivors who are living in about 20 makeshift refugee camps being operated by the Diocese of Haiti.

Among its efforts to date; ERD has,

•  Supplied more than five tons of food to diocesan camps.
• Provided tents for the diocesan camps.
• Delivered food by helicopter to 15,000 refugees living in camps not accessible by vehicle.
• Trained workers to install and maintain 20 water purification systems.
• Purchased three trucks in the Episcopal Diocese of the Dominican Republic to transport supplies into Haiti, and bought fuel for the trips.

More information is available at www.er-d.org/HaitiCrisis.